Conceptual design, modeling and compliance characterization of a novel 2-DOF rotational pointing mechanism for fast steering mirror

In this paper, a novel 2-DOF rotational pointing mechanism (RPM) is designed inspired by the guidelines of the graphical approach. The mechanism integrates with a fast steering mirror (FSM) for compensating pointing errors of a laser beam. The design intends to achieve an angular travel of ±10 mrad and steers a 25 mm mirror aperture. A planar flexure with beam flexures accompanied in parallel with an axial flexure build-up mechanism configuration. Compliant mechanism-based RPM ensures high precision and compactness. Compliance characteristics are established based on the stiffness matrix method for four different planar flexure layouts. One layout with best in-plane rotational compliance is then assessed for performance sensitivity to mechanism dimension parameters and parasitic error, thus informing the design space. Rotational stiffness in both the in-plane rotational axes and stress is determined based on finite element analysis (FEA). The wire electrical discharge machining (EDM) is employed for developing the proof of concept for the RPM and is then assembled in FSM. Experiments are conducted to determine the rotational stiffness and angular travel about both in-plane rotational axes. Comparison among theoretical, numerical and experiments reveal excellent linearity of rotational stiffness along the rotational travel range. The maximum theoretical error is less than 5.5% compared with FEA while, the experimental error has a mean of 5% and 3% for both rotational axes thus satisfying the intended design requirement.